Alton Botball team ready for second competition

Published 12:00 am, Thursday, April 10, 2014

ALTON — After a successful debut at last year’s event, the Alton Middle School Botball team is gearing up for another go-round at Saturday’s Greater St. Louis regional tournament.

The tournament, which will take place from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Southern Illlinois University Edwardsville’s Morris University Center Ballroom, features Botball teams from around the metro St. Louis area competing to see whose robot has what it takes to bring home the top score.

More than just a competition, Botball is an exercise in which a team of students, in AMS’ case made of up seventh- and eighth-graders, build and program a robot from scratch. The robot is programmed to complete certain tasks, all of which score points for the team. Completing the different tasks — grabbing blocks, moving plush toys, avoiding obstacles — requires different skill levels and awards different point totals based on the intricacy of the tasks.

Last year, the tasks centered around a hypothetical trip to Mars for Bot Guy, the competition’s mascot. This year’s tasks revolve around Bot Guy’s return to Earth, including grabbing blocks from tall shelves and retrieving clothing hangers from an elevated bar, among others. The students have known the theme and have been working on a replica competition table at the middle school in preparation for Saturday.

That preparation began in February for the club’s eight participants. AMS students Isaiah Cross, Isaac Drysdale, Kennedi Koetzle, Isabella Lincoln, Hannah Macias, Maggie McCarthy, Raina Schlueter and Will Schuenke have been meeting after school three times per week for the last seven weeks to test programs, adjust the robots and anything else that may be needed in hopes that Saturday will run smoothly.

“It’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun,” Schlueter said.

It’s more than just playing with robots, though. AMS computer technology teacher and Botball mentor Robert Miller said the program touches on a number of subjects including science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) principles, but also involves some English/language arts concepts as well. Along with programming the robots to move in a certain way, points are awarded for students’ ability to explain why and how the robot moves the way it does. Select team members are also charged with giving an eight-minute presentation on the team’s robot and the work that went into it.

Mike Eversole, a junior in the Alton High School robotics program who has helped the students ready their robot for the event, said that aspect of the competition may be the most important for aspiring robotics students.

“It’s one thing just copying code,” Eversole said. “You actually have to know what it does, truthfully. That’s more knowledgeable than actually winning or losing, if you know what’s going on.”

In its inaugural tournament last year, the AMS squad teamed up with Triad High School to take second place in the alliance match, the part of the competition where two teams work together to score the most points. This year the team has a higher goal of placing in the double elimination match. To do that, it will have to best the majority of the tournament’s 21 entrants, including teams from the Edwardsville, Highland and Carrolton school districts.

Last year the group received a grant from SIUE that allowed it to compete; this year, Miller said Conoco Phillips donated the $1,800 entry fee, with a NASA grant helping out as well.

With school district budgets tightening, Miller hopes to find the resources to be able to continue to enter the competition in coming years. He said a bigger goal is getting the program to be implemented into the curriculum to give more students the chance to see if robotics is among their interests.

The growing use of robotics in day-to-day life gives Miller hope.

“You name it, robots are in everything,” Miller said.

Nathan Grimm may be reached at 618-463-2515 or on Twitter @GrimmTelegraph.